by Zach Smith | Dec 19, 2015 | Care, Elms, Oaks, Pruning, Sweetgum
Winter is supposed to be a time where all sorts of bonsai activities more or less come to a halt, but the fact is there are a number of chores we can and should do in order to move our trees along. One reason to get these chores out of the way is to keep from having to do them in spring, when repotting tends to take center-stage.
This water oak, Quercus nigra, has been growing from a volunteer seedling for several years now. I chopped it a couple of years ago and left it alone to see what it would do. It produced what’s known as a “sling shot,” where you have two leaders in a Y shape, and it’s universally considered ugly (and it is, let’s face it). So today’s task, one of a number in the ultimate development of this pre-bonsai specimen, is to eliminate the sling shot and set the tree up for its next round of growth.
Step number one: saw off one of the legs of the Y. I chose the thicker of the two for a couple of reasons: one, its movement was at a little sharper of an angle than the other, which I didn’t care for; and two, it was thicker. One of my goals is to create adequate taper in the trunk of this tree. By cutting to the thicker of the two legs and letting it grow out, I would be limiting the amount of taper I could expect going forward.
Next I chopped the new leader. It’ll bud very near the chop and I’ll allow a leader to grow unrestrained in 2016. This should thicken the original transition area and make the tapering look much more realistic by the end of the next growing season.
I couldn’t leave that big stub where I chopped off the right-hand leader, so the next step was to saw it down in anticipation of next year’s growth. This chop will start rolling over, and I have to be sure it looks right or else I’ll need to re-chop. I hate doing development chores on trees twice (or more).
Here’s a final shot from an different angle. While there’s no real need yet to try and figure out where the front of this tree is, it’s fun to speculate on possible future directions for it. With that sizable chop – which granted in time will heal over – I may consider turning it into an uro down the road.
One final comment about oaks. They don’t seem to need to be sealed like most other species, though I do seal all of mine. Oaks are known to have the ability to compartmentalize damage that occurs to them, which is no doubt one of the reasons they can live so long.
This sweetgum, Liquidambar styracifula, grew this way all by itself from a volunteer seedling. I really like the cool snaky curve and it’s got good taper already. Developing trees like this one is a pretty easy process – you just chop and grow a new leader repeatedly until you have the trunk you’re after.
And here it is, sawed off and the chop sealed. Easy as pie. One thing I will have to do this coming spring is to watch for competing leaders and select the most suitable one. But the most difficult part of that will be remembering to do it.
Last but not least is this Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, three or four years from a cutting and planted out a couple of years ago. The trunk base is now about 1″, and my plan is to grow it to at least 2″ before lifting it. First things first, of course, and that means managing the growth so that I get taper and decent trunk movement.
Right now this specimen is a twin-trunk. I’m not sure that will be the ultimate plan, but if not then the secondary trunk is in a great spot to help thicken the primary trunk.
Just a couple of quick cuts, and now this tree can continue to grow in 2016. It’ll probably take until about 2018 to get to the size I want. So stay tuned for more updates.
by Zach Smith | Dec 5, 2015 | Care, Elms, Hawthorn, Sweetgum
It’s still a couple of weeks before the official start of winter, but I’m very close to having benches full of winter silhouettes. This is one of the reasons I love deciduous trees. You definitely get four full seasons out of them, from spring budding through summer vigor, fall color (we do get some down here), and finally the bare branches that define the winter-hardy tree. I for one am always impressed by the quiet dignity of an old deciduous tree in winter. If you study them long enough, you can get a true sense of all the decades of silent watching they’ve done. Nothing else is needed of them but just being. They serve their purpose through the generations.
A deciduous forest is quite a sight. This sweetgum group, Liquidambar styraciflua, has just begun its journey as a bonsai in 2015. Next year all I need to do is pinch the new growth and let it continue to get established as a coherent group. Pretty simple work.
This water-elm clump, Planera aquatica, looks really good for its first full year of training. It’s already starting to develop the twigginess that will make this group look like a real forest.
And finally, my big riverflat hawthorn, Crataegus opaca. I absolutely love the way this tree looks. It’s very close to completely built; I only have the crown to grow out, which should be mostly done next year. I’ll then be able to focus on improving the tapering transition. By the end of the 2017 growing season, this tree will be spectacular.
by Zach Smith | Nov 29, 2015 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Sweetgum, Water Elm
The only thing I envy about my fellow bonsai artists from up North is the fall color they get to enjoy on their deciduous trees. In the Deep South we typically don’t get a lot of fall color. When we do, it arrives suddenly – this weekend for 2015, to be precise – then the leaves all fall within a few days and winter ugliness begins. I was pleased this year to see a little fall color in my garden, and wanted to share a couple of trees with you.
Here’s the sweetgum I recently posted for sale. One reason I love sweetgum is that it’s one of only a few species that will actually produce reds and purples in fall down here. We mostly get yellows and browns, which are certainly attractive in their own right but you just can’t beat the reds and purples in my opinion.
Here’s my “root around cypress knees” water-elm. It’s in need of a trim, but I wanted to show it before pulling out the shears since I knew I’d knock off a lot of the leaves in the process. This is typical water-elm fall color. I sometimes get it, but most of the time don’t.
And after a quick shearing. These remaining leaves may hang on for a few days; but for now, they look really nice.
by Zach Smith | Nov 28, 2015 | Care, Elms, Water Elm
I wrote before on my new experience of collecting water-elms, Planera aquatica, in October. A number of the specimens I brought home have shown new bud activity, though late in the season of course. There won’t be shoots from these buds, but their appearance tells me the trees have maintained their cells’ internal pressure going into dormancy. For those of you with some experience collecting trees, you know what sap withdrawal looks like. Smaller branchlets become brittle (in many cases you can actually see the juvenile bark wrinkle from dehydration). Once this process begins, you can pretty much count the tree as dead. On the other hand, those trees that are going to make it maintain their cells’ internal pressure, or hydration, and sap flow is re-established with the growth of new roots and then shoots (sometimes this is reversed, but sap flow is what pushes the new roots and shoots).
You may remember this tree from October 18th. It was the biggest one I brought home. As I noted at the time, I always do my best to bring home one big hunky masculine specimen from each trip. This one fit the bill.
Fast-forward to now, and this specimen has roots emerging from the drain holes of its pot. It’s also pushed a few new buds, which won’t grow any further this year. But the fact that there are roots tells me the trees’ cells are well hydrated. Barring something unusual happening this winter, this tree should explode with growth come spring.
Here’s the tree today. It’ll go on sale next spring. The trunk is 5″ at the soil surface (flaring roots are buried, as usual), and it’s 31.5″ to the chop.
by Zach Smith | Nov 25, 2015 | American Elm, Care, Elms, Privet, Pruning, Tools, Wiring
Winter is no excuse to stop practicing our bonsai scales. By this, of course, I mean the continued practice of techniques that help us get better and better at designing and developing our bonsai. And along these lines, I’m a big proponent of practicing on less than stellar material. Why? Well, when you get down to it there’s never been a bonsai that didn’t start out as less than stellar material. All of our trees have to grow, get whacked back or chewed on, suffer drought and/or deluge, and one day they look like something we really want on our bench. In the meantime, however, there are those little trees that won’t make you look twice. These get the “treatment.”
Here’s Exhibit A, otherwise known as less than stellar Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense. This isn’t a terrible piece of material, but it does have its issues. The biggest one is the fat base with the shoulder, that narrows into the main part of the trunk too quickly. Now, this is a nice practice piece. There are problems that can be solved, and when they are the material will be much better.
A few minutes later, the overlarge base has been whittled down so it looks like part of the tree. This is very straightforward, but I can’t tell you how often I’ve had students or demo observers amazed when I attack a piece of material so aggressively. To be sure, not all species appreciate rough treatment. But once you start learning the individual habits of different species, especially the types of work you can safely do at what times of the year, you can get actually away with a lot.
The next problem with this tree was the odd branch sticking straight out near the original chop. A quick whack and some nibbling with the knob cutter solved that problem.
And finally, I removed everything that didn’t look like a future Chinese privet bonsai, wired and positioned the branches.
Hey, it’s not awesome material but it’s a lot closer to stellar than before. This one can go into a bonsai pot next spring.
Just so you know I know what really nondescript material looks like, here’s Exhibit B, an American elm, Ulmus Americana, that began as a single trunk nondescript specimen a few years ago, after which it dried out and died back to the base (at which point I threw it on the discard pile, thinking it was totally dead), after which it sprouted two shoots from the base and I felt compelled to save it. This is the end of year two of the regrowth of this tree. There’s really not much to it. But as you develop pre-bonsai from seed or cuttings, you learn various techniques for developing trunk size and character. In the case of this specimen, I need some movement in the swelling trunks. So I put some fairly heavy gauge wire on each trunk.
I didn’t try anything fancy here, just put a little curve in each trunk. Notice, however, how I’ve started this design. The trunks move in harmony with one another. The left-hand trunk is destined to be more upright, which means the right-hand trunk needs to sweep a bit farther to the right. This is what would happen in nature, as the right-hand trunk needs sufficient light to thrive.
The wire on this little tree will need to come off next May at the latest. I expect pretty rapid swelling when growth gets underway in spring.
For those of you wondering, Good Boys Do Fine Always is a mnemonic that helps music students remember their notes. That’s right, I was a band geek many decades ago.
by Zach Smith | Nov 22, 2015 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Wiring
Chinese elms, Ulmus parfivolia, grow quickly in the ground and this is how I grow all of my Chinese elm material with the exception of trees intended for forest plantings. In 2014 I lifted a specimen I’d had in the ground for a few years to see how quickly I could move it from raw material to presentable bonsai. The lift was made in late winter, and I put the tree directly into a bonsai pot (which I knew would slow down the process, but that didn’t concern me).
In August of last year, the chopped stump had produced shoots long enough to be wired, and I had a good enough set that I could create a suitable structure right from the start.
It doesn’t look like much, does it? But every bonsai begins with a tree that has either grown in the wild from a seed ultimately becoming a stump/trunk/clump/etc., or in “captivity” from seed or cutting, or in the ground from seed or cutting with more or less management by the grower as it develops. Having grown many hundreds of bonsai through the years, the prospect of taking a bare trunk all the way to a finished bonsai does not discourage me in the least. In fact, it’s one of the more pleasurable pursuits I can think of.
Following this initial styling, I simply left the tree alone (being mindful of the thickening of branch and leader so as to remove the wire at the proper time) for the rest of the 2014 growing season.
This is what had happened by early July of 2015. I needed the strongest growth in the new apex of the tree, and that’s just what I got. Though the tree would have grown this way on its own, trying to get taller, I helped the process along by keeping the energy in the lower branches directed toward ramification. The structure of each lateral branch was easily built during this growing season.
The next step for this tree was to cut back the new leader in order to ensure that the tapering transition at the original chop, roughly 9″ from the soil surface, would end up looking right. The trunk as lifted had gentle taper, not as dramatic as I may have liked, so the trick in finishing out the trunk will be to continue the gentle taper yet bring it to completion at a final height of about 16″.
After the chop. This looks pretty funny, doesn’t it? But building taper in your trunk or branches requires cutting back hard after a period of unrestrained growth. It’s how this trunk got to where it was before I lifted it. So after allowing the leader to grow for almost a year, I had a long section measuring almost 6″ which had zero taper. What’s more, I had only one way to induce taper into this section of new trunk, namely letting sacrifice branches grow. While this was certainly doable, it wasn’t the fastest or even the best way. Growing a new leader was the obvious choice.
In this final photo you can see the next stage beginning for this tree. I got a few buds on the truncated leader that I allowed to grow unrestrained. Since it was late in the season, they were only able to extend about 6″ before dormancy hit. But in 2016, I’ll let one of them run wild and I’m betting the original transition will start looking much better. The thickness of the first new leader should double next year.
So this is a year in the development of a Chinese elm bonsai. I expect that in another two years I should have the rest of the trunk built, along with a lot more of the lateral branching. By year four, this tree will be fully built.
